When
· Naughties
· · 2003
· · · September
· · · · 06 (2 entries)
Elephant Lightning · After months of drought, it rained today in Vancouver! It’s raining right now, and we’re all hoping the rain will move up-country, where the firefighters haven’t been winning many recently. The rain arrived accompanied by a big thunderstorm, a rarity here, and I was explaining to the four-year-old about lightning and thunder, and how you shouldn’t go outside because you can get struck by lightning. He said “And when elephants go out in the storm, the lightning hits them, right?” Er, I suppose. I don’t know. And for that matter consider the giraffes with their little hornlets like lightning rods. Is there no lightning on the African savannahs, or do the elephants and giraffes just get zapped sometimes, or what? [Updated: It happens, and it’s worth reading about.] ...
DC Intel · Most places in the world, when you talk about “Intel” you’re talking about CPU chips. In Washington DC, that word is universally an abbreviation for Intelligence, as in three-letter agencies, spooks, and so on. A couple of weeks ago I was invited to an all-day meeting of the Intelligence Community Metadata Working Group (ICMWG) out in Virginia, one of my more interesting outings of 2003. Herewith some personal notes on the notion of spying and a look at what may be the world’s biggest and hardest metadata problem, with some remarks on the application of RDF ...
